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Ninety years ago, when E. L. Thorndike introduced the first issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology, he made promises that he and other educational researchers could not keep. He predicted that in just a few short years the new science of educational research, whose fruits were to be featured in the new journal, would solve all the problems of educators! Once education was on a firm scientific footing, he believed, it would hum like the rest of America's institutions and industries. It too would be productive and efficient.
As the century rolled on, America encountered such things as the great depression and the atomic bomb, and for many people science was no longer an unequivocal great and good force for improvement of the world. Then, in the decades after World War II, critical examinations of science and its methods led to a massive rejection of the kind of naive surety in science that had marked the beginning of this century. While educational psychology, in particular, and educational research, in general, has thrived, few scholars today believe that the social sciences and educational research will provide truth and surety as it attempts to ameliorate the problems faced by those who toil in our schools.
What is it that we now can expect from scholarship in education? Let us call it illumination through appropriate methodology. We want the problems of education illuminated because we recognize that they are always embedded in economic, social, political, philosophical and historical contexts, and therefore hard to approach from just one social science perspective. Education's problems may not be easily solvable, but they surely can be better understood and improvements in the educational system can occur. The problems of education, we now recognize, are the proper study of psychologists, anthropologists, critical theorists, action researchers, policy analysts, teacher educators, and many others. What is wanted is illumination of these problems with the appropriate methodology that each of these perspectives on education has developed for inquiry into educational issues.
So we in ASU's College of Education, through our graduate students, launch this new electronic journal for a new century and millennium. It is a very different journal than the kind envisioned by E. L. Thorndike almost a century ago. This journal is committed to:
- illumination of educational issues,
- a multidisciplinary approach,
- methodological eclecticism as well as methodological excellence, and
- interaction with the readers of the journal.
Current Issues in Education will be markedly different from the more narrow disciplinary journals of the 20th century in both philosophy and format. And it will be free. With faculty advisors, our graduate students will determine the content and form of this new journal. By doing that, the newest scholars in our field will have a chance to redefine and explore both the problems of education and the methods we use to study them, as each new generation of scholars must. The College of Education is proud to sponsor our graduate students and to join them as they launch this journal for the benefit of our colleagues and our profession.
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Author
David C. Berliner is Regents Professor, and Dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University. His research and scholarship focus on teaching, teacher education, and educational policy. He is coauthor (with B. Biddle) of The Manufactured Crisis, which won the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association; coeditor (with R. Calfee) of the Handbook of Educational Psychology; and coauthor (with N. L. Gage) of Educational Psychology, now in its 6th edition. He has received the Edward Lee Thorndike Award for Distinguished Psychological Contribution to Education and AERA's highest award: the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research. He has been president of both AERA and the American Psychological Association's Division of Educational Psychology. Dr. Berliner is a member of the National Academy of Education. Dr. Berliner may be reached at berliner@asu.edu.
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